Since 1970 Zeki has been based at University College, being appointed the Professor of Neurobiology in 1981 and most recently, Professor of Neuroesthetics . Here he details his theories on the intimate connections between the brain, the mind and experience

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

The myth of "interdisciplinarity"

The great buzz word in research applications is
“interdisciplinarity”.Often research
councils frame their invitations to applicants in terms which make it seem that
they favour interdisciplinary research. And of course there is much that speaks
in favour of such research. In a way, it has been happening slowly and almost
imperceptibly at universities. Departments have changed their names and their
structures as well to reflect this fact, or so they believe.

In truth, interdisciplinarity is just a word used to soothe
the conscience of funding bodies that they are “with it” in the world of modern
research. In fact, a recent report from Australia shows that the chances of
being funded for an inter-disciplinary project are significantly less than that
in mono-disciplines. Interdisciplinarity, it seems, often means nothing more
than combining neuroanatomy with neuropathology, or neurochemistry with
neuropharmacology, or parallel studies in English and German Romantic
literature.

But try to combine science with the humanities (e.g.
neurobiology with mathematics, or physics with philosophy) and you will end up
against a brick wall.

In fact the British Academy has set up an investigation into
interdisciplinarity in higher education and research, a sure sign that the buzz
wordhas not had much effect.

The reason for this is to be sought, so we are told, in the
structure of the committees that oversee funding and there is no doubt that this is partly true. When applying for a grant,
the applicant must choose a panel that will decide the fate of the application,
but the panels are often composed of people who are highly specialized in their
fields. There are some examples when the funding agencies seek to cross
the border and seek opinion from the “other” field. But this is somewhat rare.
Hence, interdisciplinary applications commonly fail, with utterly banal "feed-back" to the applicants,
such as “you have not convinced the committee that this is transformative
research” or “you have not made a case for incorporating humanities into your
work”. Often the work is thus dismissed through the “triage” system overseen by those who have little understanding of the "other" discipline, without
going to referees for a full appraisal.

The dearth of genuine inter-disciplinary research is also reflected
in the dearth of journals which publish articles that genuinely cross
disciplines.

There is another, and unacknowledged, factor that impedes
interdisciplinarity -territoriality.Many, especially
in the humanities, are consciously or unconsciously resentful of the incursion
of sciences into what they regard to be their discipline; they fear being
relegated into second-class participants. Scientists, on the other hand, have a
general tendency to dismiss research in the humanities as not having
the high standards of proof that they claim for their own fields.

I naturally do not want to tar all scientists and humanists
with the same brush. There are many, many honourable exceptions in both camps;
but they remain exceptions.

This territoriality, I suggest, is perhaps an even more important
factor in impeding the progress of inter-disciplinarity. It is also much more
difficult to combat because it operates silently. After all, no member of any
panel is going to declare publicly that “this application is trespassing into
my field”

Hence, research councils must protect themselves against
that but it is not an easy task.

Of course, any changes to the structural and administrative
organization of funding councils will take years. Meanwhile, for those
increasing number of young researchers who are enthusiastic about research that
crosses boundaries, because in the world of knowledge there are no such artifical boundaries, there is this word of advice – don’t waste your time
applying to the research councils for big cross-disciplinary research. Try
instead some other source– for example
big companies which see a commercial return from funding such research.Better still, identify a wise and enlightened benefactor - a sort of modern Lorenzo de' Medici, if you can find one.

It may be cynical to say so; it is certainly sad.

But it is also true, and will remain true until such time as
the research councils wake up and realise that research aspirations have
changed beyond recognition while they were snoozing.